Continue and many others. </p><p>Earlier this week, a startup in the current batch, PearAI, was criticized online for an inappropriate approach to open source, particularly in how it approached forking <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://continue.dev/">Continue. Out of instinct to defend YC companies, I supported PearAI without knowing all the facts. In this case the criticism did have merit, and I worked with PearAI’s group partner and the founders to fix this situation. </p><p>Ty Dunn and Nate Sesti, co-founders of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://continue.dev/">Continue, have had the grace to light a path forward for PearAI and all developers through their clear communication and commitment to open source. PearAI has apologized, removed the offending repositories, and is working to correct all their mistakes.</p><p>Still, I want to personally apologize to the founders of Continue, the YC community and the open source community for not responding more thoughtfully. </p><p>I also want to clear up some important facts:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://continue.dev/">Continue is not a fork of VS Code, which was misinformation reported in TechCrunch. Continue is a standalone project, built from scratch as an extension to VS Code and JetBrains, which can be easily installed by anyone in their respective marketplaces.<br></li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://continue.dev/">Continue itself is the center of a vibrant open source community that is rallying around <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://amplified.dev//">amplified.dev, which believes that the tools used to code with LLMs will be critical infrastructure, that an ecosystem is key to supporting all developer workflows, and that this will only work if developers work together. </li></ul><p>Open source is the life blood of tech startups, and everyone in our industry owes a debt to open source builders. </p><p>Thank you for making what we do possible. </p><p>Garry Tan<br>President &amp; CEO, Y Combinator</p>","comment_id":"66ff5635d896210001baba89","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2024-10-03T19:43:01.000-07:00","updated_at":"2024-10-03T19:51:51.000-07:00","published_at":"2024-10-03T19:49:44.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/correcting-the-record/","excerpt":"YC is at our best when backing founders with an ethos of building for others,\nincluding strong open source developers like the founders of Continue\n[https://continue.dev] and many others. \n\nEarlier this week, a startup in the current batch, PearAI, was criticized online\nfor an inappropriate approach to open source, particularly in how it approached\nforking Continue [https://continue.dev]. Out of instinct to defend YC companies,\nI supported PearAI without knowing all the facts. In this case the c","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},"mentions":[],"related_posts":[{"id":"68cb2e07b809c500016a377c","uuid":"272a00ad-8319-41a1-aa2d-40fa002ff27a","title":"YC x Coinbase RFS: Build Onchain","slug":"build-onchain","html":"<p>We believe that it’s time to build onchain. The tools have been maturing over the last decade, but with low-cost chains, globally adopted stablecoins, easy-to-use wallets, and growing consumer adoption, the infrastructure is finally ready. And we are already seeing a number of large trends that have huge opportunity for builders around the world.</p><p>It starts with the fact that we are at the beginning of a new era in financial technology: Fintech 3.0.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pdne9xaRLUc?feature=oembed\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen title=\"Now Is The Best Time To Build In Crypto\"></iframe></figure><p>Fintech 1.0 was the initial digitization of finance in the 90s, driven by companies like PayPal. The key unlock here was that consumers became comfortable paying for things online. </p><p>Fintech 2.0, which occurred over the last decade and was driven by companies like Stripe, Plaid, Brex, and Chime, involved building APIs on top of the existing financial system. The key unlock here were banking-as-a-service (BaaS) providers that made it possible for startups to build on top of the legacy financial system. </p><p>Now, we are entering the era of Fintech 3.0. This era will be about building a new financial system with code. A system where payments settle instantly, anywhere in the world, 24/7. A system where users store their assets in digital wallets, which they have full control and custody over, rather than banks. </p><p>For years, the main obstacle to building Fintech 3.0 has been regulatory uncertainty. With the passage of the GENIUS Act—and potentially, the CLARITY Act—we now have a clear crypto regulatory framework in the US that will let founders build generational companies onchain, with confidence. This is the most significant opportunity for crypto startups in years, and at YC and Coinbase, we want to fund and support you to seize it. </p><p>Below, we discuss a few areas we’re particularly excited to fund, though this is by no means exhaustive.</p><h3 id=\"stablecoins\">Stablecoins</h3><p>Stablecoins are the first major success story for Fintech 3.0.</p><p>Stablecoins are an onchain asset whose value is pegged to another asset, like fiat currency or gold, designed to maintain a stable price. Stablecoins are ideal for payments, and offer clear benefits over traditional financial transactions, especially when moving money across borders. Anyone can send a stablecoin anywhere in the world 24/7, for less than 1 cent and in under 1 second, with no foreign exchange fees. This isn’t theoretical; trillions of dollars of stablecoin payments have already been settled. </p><p>People are already building stablecoin apps with millions of users. YC alumni like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kontigo/">Kontigo, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/dolarapp/">DolarApp, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/aspora/">Aspora are powering instant, low-cost payments and remittances for millions of users across Latin America and South Asia. Coinbase Ventures-backed company El Dorado, a marketplace for sending and receiving stablecoins in Latin America, has processed $200 million for nearly 1 million users in the past year—evidence of the region’s growing demand for crypto as a hedge against currency devaluation.</p><p>And it’s not just startups: Coinbase just launched its open-source <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.base.dev/commerce-payments-protocol/">Commerce Payments Protocol</a> with Shopify, which enables any traditional online commerce and acceptance flows onchain with stablecoins—providing all of the benefits of crypto payments (lightning fast settlements, near-zero transaction fees) with the security and scale of typical e-commerce features (delayed capture, tax finalization, and refunds). </p><p>The fact that stablecoins have succeeded despite regulatory headwinds speaks to just how strong market demand for them is. Now, their adoption in the US is set to explode after the successful passage of the GENIUS Act, which creates a comprehensive federal regulatory system for stablecoins that mirrors the system for banks. Since the GENIUS Act went into effect, the total market capitalization of stablecoins has grown by over $30 billion and major companies like Amazon and Walmart have expressed interest in launching their own stablecoins.</p><p>There are lots of areas to build in the stablecoin space, but we’re particularly interested in:</p><ul><li>Stablecoins integrated everywhere: Platforms that process payments, lending, and other financial services can get massive efficiency gains from stablecoins. Enabling businesses and consumers to transact seamlessly across the platform will unlock massive value.</li><li>Local currency stablecoins: Stablecoins pegged to local currencies that let people in inflationary economies capture the benefits of crypto without relying solely on the dollar. Governments and consumers wary of dollarization could adopt these as the foundation for local payments, savings, and lending.</li><li>Crypto-native commerce businesses: With the emergence of the Commerce Payments Protocol and other tools, there’s an opportunity to enable merchants, lenders, and consumers to handle acceptance, credit, and payments natively in crypto. Based on the global nature of the platform, there’s an opportunity to serve customers in a new way.</li></ul><h3 id=\"tokenization-and-trading\">Tokenization and Trading</h3><p>The same rails that make stablecoins work can be used for any asset. This is where Fintech 3.0 gets really interesting. With tokenization, we can radically change what an asset is and who can own it.</p><p>Tokenization means representing real-world assets, like a government bond, a share in a startup, a piece of art, or a loan, as a digital token on a blockchain. The value here is that assets that have historically been illiquid and locked behind layers of middlemen can now be owned, traded, and used by anyone, anywhere. </p><p>In practice, this could mean:</p><ul><li>Instead of waiting a month for a dividend check, you could receive your share of a building's rental income paid out to your wallet every second.</li><li>Instead of complex paperwork to exercise your startup stock options, you could have a \"live cap table\" where your equity is a programmable token you truly own and can sell on an open market.</li><li>Instead of needing millions to invest in private credit, you could buy a token representing a fraction of a diversified loan portfolio.</li></ul><p>This is already starting to happen. Major institutions like J.P. Morgan are bringing their own <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.base.org/jpmorgan-is-moving-onchain-on-base/">deposit tokens</a> onchain, and startups like Courtyard are tokenizing physical collectibles. We’re also seeing the emergence of new, onchain native assets like creator and content coins being tokenized on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zora.co//">Zora and Pump.fun. </p><p>And all of this is leading to a lot of new trading: businesses like YC alumni <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://axiom.xyz/">Axiom are some of the fastest-growing YC companies that we’ve ever seen.</p><p>The core infrastructure is here. We’re looking for founders to build the products that will bring every other asset class online. </p><p>We’re especially interested in:</p><ul><li>New credit markets: Lending protocols that use onchain identity and reputation to offer undercollateralized loans, providing capital to people and businesses that the traditional system overlooks.</li><li>Onchain capital formation: Tools for startups to raise money directly from their users and manage their cap table with programmable tokens instead of spreadsheets and lawyers.</li><li>New trading interfaces: With the explosion of assets, there are new opportunities to help consumers and businesses trade and invest.</li></ul><h3 id=\"apps-and-agents\">Apps and Agents</h3><p>Onchain also opens up a new frontier for apps and agents that were not possible on yesterday’s internet. One way to think about chains is as a new kind of operating system: a global, shared platform that’s 10x better for building apps, that no single company owns, and on which anyone can build without asking permission. And with money-as-software, agents are natively equipped to participate in this new economy.</p><p>We think this will lead to an explosion of new apps. Social, finance, collaboration, games—everything. We’re already seeing this happen on platforms like Base, where you can use apps to do just about anything: from getting a loan in seconds, to playing a game and making money, to supporting your favorite creators in a way where you earn, too.</p><p>And we think that many of these apps will also show up in chat, as agents. AI agents with wallets are superpowered, and will help people navigate and participate in the rapidly growing global economy. They’ll simplify and improve user experiences, just like they are doing in other business sectors across the world.</p><p>We are so excited to see what you build onchain. If you are building for this new reality—or have an even bigger vision for what this new era unlocks—we want to hear from you. Together, YC, Base, and Coinbase Ventures are excited to support developers building onchain.<br><br><u><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Apply here for the next YC batch</a></u>.</p>","comment_id":"68cb2e07b809c500016a377c","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2025/09/Base_BuildOnchain_Ycombinator_CB--1-.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2025-09-17T14:54:15.000-07:00","updated_at":"2025-09-23T09:24:07.000-07:00","published_at":"2025-09-23T08:00:58.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We are entering the era of Fintech 3.0.\n\nRegulatory clarity, growing consumer adoption, and low-cost chains have paved the way for a golden age of building in crypto — and at YC, Base, and Coinbase, we want to fund builders to seize this moment. ","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71094","name":"Harj Taggar","slug":"harj-taggar","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Harj.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Harj Taggar is a Managing Partner at YC. He was previously founder and CEO of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Auctomatic (YC W07), which was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/harj-taggar/"},{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71076","name":"Jesse Pollak","slug":"jesse-pollak","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2025/09/QngrqCSC_400x400.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jesse currently works on Base, which he created and leads day-to-day. Previously he led all Consumer engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jesse-pollak/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"638a7d499132af0001d1aee9","name":"rfs","slug":"rfs","description":"Request for Startups","feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/rfs/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71094","name":"Harj Taggar","slug":"harj-taggar","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Harj.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Harj Taggar is a Managing Partner at YC. He was previously founder and CEO of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Auctomatic (YC W07), which was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/harj-taggar/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/build-onchain/","excerpt":"We believe that it’s time to build onchain. The tools have been maturing over the last decade, but with low-cost chains, globally adopted stablecoins, easy-to-use wallets, and growing consumer adoption, the infrastructure is finally ready. And we are already seeing a number of large trends that have huge opportunity for builders around the world.","reading_time":5,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"684af82bf282e10001465471","uuid":"dff93036-5fac-45ba-be2b-b8bec53503c7","title":"Dalton Caldwell’s Move to Partner Emeritus","slug":"dalton-caldwell-partner-emeritus","html":"<p>After 12+ years, 25 batches, and working with more than a thousand startups, Dalton Caldwell is transitioning to Partner Emeritus at YC.</p><p>Dalton joined YC in 2011 and has contributed in a number of roles over the years, most recently as a Managing Partner. During his time here, he worked closely with founders and played a consistent role in how we support companies at the earliest stages.</p><p>He was also deeply involved in YC’s application process, helping to refine how we evaluate early-stage teams and identify founders with clarity, strong ideas, and product instincts. Over the years, he’s been a steady presence for founders navigating the earliest and often hardest parts of company-building.</p><p>Now, Dalton is stepping into a new role as co-founder of Standard Capital, an AI-native Series A firm he’s launching with Bryan Berg and our very own Paul Buchheit. It’s a natural next step for Dalton, and one we’re excited to support.</p><p>While he’s stepping back from day-to-day work at YC, he’ll remain part of the community as Partner Emeritus, continuing to be a resource to founders and alumni in a more limited capacity.</p><p>We appreciate Dalton’s many contributions to YC over the past decade and look forward to cheering him on in this next chapter and beyond.</p>","comment_id":"684af82bf282e10001465471","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2025-06-12T08:54:19.000-07:00","updated_at":"2025-06-12T12:25:08.000-07:00","published_at":"2025-06-12T11:36:17.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/dalton-caldwell-partner-emeritus/","excerpt":"After 12+ years, 25 batches, and working with more than a thousand startups, Dalton Caldwell is transitioning to Partner Emeritus at YC.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"68ed3954a8544700017e7f07","uuid":"964b0540-6dbb-444f-a298-5b8236c8c1fb","title":"Meet YC's Newest Visiting Partners","slug":"ycs-newest-visiting-partners","html":"<p>I'm excited to announce that nine exceptional founders are joining us as Visiting Partners at YC: Matt Riley, Harshita Arora, Grey Baker, Christopher Golda, Raphael Schaad, Christina Gilbert, Francois Chaubard, Vivian Shen, and James Evans.</p><p>Visiting Partners are former founders who are taking some time out before their next thing to help advise startups during the batch. They work closely with YC General Partners, sharing hard-won insights from building and scaling their own companies. Each of our new Visiting Partners brings a unique perspective—from design-led products and developer tools to AI infrastructure and edtech.<br><br><strong>Matt Riley</strong></p><p>Matt was the co-founder and CEO of Swiftype (YC W12), a search-as-a-service company acquired by Elastic in 2017. At Elastic, he was GVP &amp; GM of the Search business unit, and led the product, engineering, design, and developer relations teams that brought Elasticsearch to market. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering.</p><p><strong>Harshita Arora</strong></p><p>Harshita Arora grew up in India, where she discovered coding at 13 and dropped out of school at 15 to pursue it full-time. At 16, she built a crypto price tracking and portfolio management app that was featured by Apple and subsequently acquired. She then received an O-1 visa and moved to San Francisco, where she co-founded AtoB (YC S20), which builds financial infrastructure for the trucking and transportation industry. AtoB has raised over $125M in venture capital and serves 20,000+ fleets across the US. In her early 20s, Harshita is also the youngest ever visiting partner at YC.<br><br><strong>Grey Baker</strong></p><p>Grey was a co-founder of Pincites (S23) and of Dependabot, a developer tool used by over a million people that was acquired by GitHub in 2019. Previously, Grey was an early employee at GoCardless (YC S11) where he led product and engineering. He has an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge, where he graduated top of his year.</p><p><strong>Christopher Golda</strong></p><p>Chris was the co-founder and CEO of BackType (YC S08), a data infrastructure &amp; analytics company acquired by Twitter in 2011, where he subsequently launched and ran the Ad Center product, growing revenue to $1.4B. The distributed data processing work at BackType became the basis for the Lambda Architecture, and Chris helped open source Apache Storm, an early distributed real-time computation system. Post-Twitter, he has been working with founders to help them find customers and raise capital, participating in early-stage rounds of startups like Benchling, Coinbase, Stoke, and Supabase. Chris graduated from the University of Toronto and has a BASc in Electrical Engineering.</p><p><strong>Raphael Schaad</strong></p><p>Raphael is the founder and CEO of Cron (YC W20), a calendar product beloved for its craft and acquired by Notion in 2022. At Notion, he grew Calendar to millions of users and served as Head of Design for Growth and new products like Mail. Previously, he helped build Flipboard and iA Writer. Raphael holds a BS in Computer Science from Bern University of Applied Sciences and an MS in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.<br></p><p><strong>Christina Gilbert</strong></p><p>Christina is the co-founder and former CEO of OneSchema (YC S21), the leading CSV ingestion platform trusted by thousands of developers to build AI-powered data pipelines. Under her leadership, OneSchema raised $10M from investors including General Catalyst, Sequoia's Alfred Lin, Elad Gil, and Contrary Capital, and was named a Forbes Cloud 100 rising star. Christina studied CS at Stanford, began her career as an Associate Product Manager at Google, and was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Enterprise Technology.<br></p><p><strong>Francois Chaubard</strong></p><p>Francois is an AI researcher and technology entrepreneur who founded Focal Systems (YC W16), the global market leader in AI applications for retail. He has built large-scale AI systems across retail, autonomous vehicles, and missile defense, and previously worked as a Computer Vision Researcher at Apple. At Stanford University, where he earned dual master's degrees in CS and EE, he created and taught some of the largest AI courses, including Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Deep Learning for NLP. He lives in Woodside, California with his wife and two children.<br><br><strong>Vivian Shen</strong></p><p>Vivian is a founder, CEO, and angel investor who has built companies from zero to $50M+ in revenue and millions of users. She founded Acely, an AI tutoring platform that scaled from $0 to millions in ARR between 2024 and 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing AI businesses in education. Before Acely, she co-founded Juni Learning (YC W18), the online academy for kids' coding and math that helped define live, one-on-one online learning. Earlier in her career, Vivian worked as a software engineer at Google, a consultant at McKinsey, and led product at an AI commerce startup. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Creative Writing from Stanford University.<br><br><strong>James Evans</strong><br>James was the co-founder and CEO of Command AI (YC S20). Command built user assistance software, like in-site chat and messaging, and was acquired by Amplitude in October 2024. Prior to Command, James worked in private equity investing at Bain Capital and studied CS at Princeton.<br><br>We're looking forward to having Matt, Harshita, Grey, Chris, Raphael, Christina, Francois, Vivian, and James join the YC community in this new capacity. As YC alumni who've experienced the batch firsthand, they understand both its intensity and potential. Their willingness to invest time in the next generation of founders exemplifies what makes YC special—founders helping founders build the future.</p>","comment_id":"68ed3954a8544700017e7f07","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2025/10/BlogTwitter-Image-Template--1-.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2025-10-13T10:39:32.000-07:00","updated_at":"2025-10-14T10:17:44.000-07:00","published_at":"2025-10-14T10:17:44.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We're excited to announce that nine exceptional founders are joining us as Visiting Partners at YC: Matt Riley, Harshita Arora, Grey Baker, Christopher Golda, Raphael Schaad, Christina Gilbert, Francois Chaubard, Vivian Shen, and James Evans.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71094","name":"Harj Taggar","slug":"harj-taggar","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Harj.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Harj Taggar is a Managing Partner at YC. He was previously founder and CEO of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Auctomatic (YC W07), which was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/harj-taggar/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71094","name":"Harj Taggar","slug":"harj-taggar","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Harj.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Harj Taggar is a Managing Partner at YC. He was previously founder and CEO of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Auctomatic (YC W07), which was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/harj-taggar/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/ycs-newest-visiting-partners/","excerpt":"I'm excited to announce that nine exceptional founders are joining us as Visiting Partners at YC: Matt Riley, Harshita Arora, Grey Baker, Christopher Golda, Raphael Schaad, Christina Gilbert, Francois Chaubard, Vivian Shen, and James Evans.","reading_time":4,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null}]},"url":"/blog/correcting-the-record","version":"86a82864a2e98321858efc8147c8b7f9287218a4","encryptHistory":false,"clearHistory":false,"rails_context":{"railsEnv":"production","inMailer":false,"i18nLocale":"en","i18nDefaultLocale":"en","href":"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/correcting-the-record","location":"/blog/correcting-the-record","scheme":"https","host":"www.ycombinator.com","port":null,"pathname":"/blog/correcting-the-record","search":null,"httpAcceptLanguage":"en, *","applyBatchLong":"Spring 2026","applyBatchShort":"X2026","applyDeadlineShort":"February 9","ycdcRetroMode":true,"currentUser":null,"serverSide":true},"id":"ycdc_new/pages/BlogPage-react-component-46fcbd91-cba6-48f5-8a97-80ae3a191e17","server_side":true}" data-reactroot="">